Arch Linux

Liddell

Member

Registered: 2026-07-11

Posts: 2

[solved] Can't enable SELinux

Hi

I have two PCs, one desktop and one laptop, both with a freshly installed arch linux. Everything works as intended on the laptop but I can't enable SELinux on the desktop, even though I follow the exact same steps:
- Building & installing SELinux using the github script linked in the wiki
- Adding lsm parameter to the kernel by modifying the /etc/default/grub file and running grub-mkconfig command

I check in the grub menu that lsm parameter was present.
But still sestatus keeps returning "disabled"

I home someone can help me figure why

Last edited by Liddell (2026-07-14 08:21:48)

Erwin Iosef

Member

Registered: 2024-05-22

Posts: 106

Re: [solved] Can't enable SELinux

Do you have SELINUX=enabled in /etc/selinux/config ? See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SELinu … g_a_policy

Liddell

Member

Registered: 2026-07-11

Posts: 2

Re: [solved] Can't enable SELinux

I finally fixed the problem. For a strange reason I can't explain I has a mistype in the grub file, a small equal sign instead of the normal sign (lsm⁼selinux instead of lsm=selinux), so it failed to parse the arguments at boot.
Everything works fine now.

Erwin Iosef

Member

Registered: 2024-05-22

Posts: 106

Re: [solved] Can't enable SELinux

Good job!

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,270

Re: [solved] Can't enable SELinux

this sounds like you either edited grub.cfg itself or /default/grub with some "fancy" editor

i have similar issues at work each day because someone uses word to edit ascii data - and word transforms the entire file into utf and switches regular quotes with whatever word uses